Another example is Ketheric:
You beat the shit out of him ... except you didnt.
So you beat the shit out of him ... except you didnt.
So you beat the shit out of him ... and you finaly did.
There is nothing wrong with returning vilain ... or having phased combat ... but stuff like that can be done better.
If you beat the vilain to 0HP ... you expect that you just beat them ...
Once cutscene, where they run away and you are standing there looking at them smiling like an idiot plays ... you feel robed of that wictory.
> Corect way to do this is easy tho ... simply double Boss HP ... and let him run once he is beaten under 50% ... then let him start another fight with the same amount he had after previous battle.
See the difference?
> In first case DM panicked, bcs you are stronger than he expected ... and so he pulled some escape out of his ass, out of sudden. (I know this didnt happen, but it feels that way.)
> In second case, DM had prepared plan for his villain to escape ... and in your next confrontation, there are echoes of your previous battle!
I'm not sure what the first fight you're talking about is, but I'm pretty sure I'd either already been told he was invulnerable before meeting him for the first time and that my task was to figure out how and stop that. And there was that bit where the low-level goblin tried to attack him and he healed up in the cutscene. I did get up to the roof while he was still invulnerable but I knew fighting him would be pointless.
The fight on the roof after finding Nightsong, yeah, I was looking forward to smashing him up before he fled. But the writing there is fine. In a tabletop game you probably wouldn't have any idea of how many HP he had left, the GM might at most say "he's taken a few scratches" or something before he flees. He probably just got some massive healing spell cast on him in the time it takes you to get down there - after all, it only takes 1 round to cast Heal.
Apologies if you did actually get him down to 0HP and he went unconscious, I can see that feeling worse (although again if the cutscene showed him being retrieved he could still have been healed fully by the time you get down to him). But for me, I think he was on about 33% health when he ran.
